Intentionally aiming toward a more joyful life

Tag Archives: self-care

I’ve been musing lately over the etymology of words. I love languages and find it fascinating to study the similarities and differences between them. I love to understand the roots of words and histories of idioms. One word that has been brain fodder for some time now is Responsibility. I am trying to take responsibility for my problems and my life. For my state of mind, my vibration, and all that that entails. Responsibility should be empowering, not crippling.

Weight is such a heavy topic in our culture. We, especially women, are bombarded with messages pushing us to be thinner, or more fit. Weight is equated with health, and if you want to be healthy, you have to be within a certain weight range. And of course, everyone else knows exactly what you need to do to get yourself into that range. You have to eat certain things, not eat certain things, exercise more, and generally make yourself miserable and hate your body. We also aren’t allowed to say that we are fat. We may say that we need to lose weight, but God forbid we call anyone fat. Fat is almost a swear word. Continue reading →

When I was young, my parents taught me my manners. I’m sure yours did, too. But I have noticed that those manners have evolved over the decades. The manners I teach my children are slightly different from what my parents taught me. Why? Aren’t manners considered timeless? Well yes, but not really. Politeness varies from culture to culture. In some cultures, slurping your soup is considered polite, while in others, it is considered rude. Continue reading →

I have been struggling with my blog over who owns whom lately. I have been doing a lot of work on my relationship with myself over the last year and my priorities have shifted. I am now taking more time to do things that I enjoy, especially time that I have previously used to zone out online reading clickbait from Facebook. I have come to value my time more and be more productive. My house has gotten into better shape as I have kept up on the chores better, I have been publishing this blog three times a week, and I have picked up my crafting again. Continue reading →

So many people make New Year’s resolutions to improve their lives at this time of year. According to Nielsen, popular resolutions include health goals, happiness goals, and financial goals. I usually fall into the 16% of Americans who don’t make resolutions. I know that real change needs to come from within, and simply flipping a page on a calendar is not sufficient motivation to sustain real change. At least not for me, and I guarantee I am not unique in this. Continue reading →

I love this exercise of finding something each week to be deeply grateful for. I try every day to be thankful for something, but to write an entire blog post every week about a blessing is a welcome challenge. At first, I wanted to find crazy things for my focus, but then I shifted to just being grateful for the good things in my life. Today, I want to be thankful for something that could be considered tragic. I am grateful today for the lessons from my two dysfunctional marriages. Continue reading →

When I first started Thankful Thursday on my blog, I never gave thought to the fact that Thanksgiving is the ultimate Thankful Thursday. I did not write my post ahead of time, and I have just come back from a delightful day with my in-laws. Today I am thankful for my family – my family of origin, my family by marriage, and my family by choice. Continue reading →

I was reading a post on Facebook by Sharon Astyk (here is her quiet-for-now blog) who used a personal example of a crisis in her life to explain that we really don’t understand our fellow countrymen right now, and we are only just now realizing we have been completely miscommunicating for a long time. That we need to sit down and really listen to discover how our neighbors see the world because it might be radically different than we do. In the comments (I know, never read the comments, but her Facebook friends are generally very respectful), someone remarked, “We all desperately want to be “read” by others, and (at least for me) it’s so hard to get past innate self-centeredness and lack of communication skills. And yeah, a neighbor could be all the things we fear. Love is stronger than fear, but is expensive. But why else are we here? We’re all so needy and broken.” Love is expensive. Is it? Continue reading →

I consider myself to be an introvert. This means that I find that social situations drain my energy, whereas staying home alone refills my energy. That doesn’t mean that I don’t like social situations or seeing my friends, it just means that I need to be emotionally full first. It is kind of like money. You earn money, and you spend money. Introverts earn our “money” through solitude. Extroverts earn “money” through social activity. Similarly, our spending habits are opposites. Introverts spend their “money” through social interactions, whereas extroverts spend their “money” through solitude. Neither is bad or good, they are just different. Continue reading →

Some of us have had hard lives. Probably even most of us have had hard times in life. I am willing to bet that everyone has had to face a challenge at some point in their lives. Some people face more challenges than others, and we call them strong. The people who have survived challenges that we don’t think we could handle often hold our admiration.Continue reading →